It is often desirable to secure a pump, a valve, or other dispensing means to a container storing a liquid product. A typical container may be made of glass and have a neck with an opening for dispensing the product, with a flange included around the opening. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,606,479 issued Aug. 16, 1989 to Van Brocklin discloses one prior art assembly for securing and sealing a dispenser to a flanged container.
In the typical application, a generally disc-shaped resilient sealing collar made of a polymeric material surrounds the barrel of an elongated pump body or other dispenser which is to be mounted in an opening in the container. The container has a neck surrounded by a flange having a flange upper surface for mating in a sealing relationship with said collar, a flange sidewall, and a ledge at the bottom of said flange. A mounting cup fits over the sealing collar, and the cup has a skirt that extends down over the collar and flange.
In the typical assembly production situation, a mounting cup is one separate workpiece, while the pump body with sealing collar attached about the barrel thereof is another separate workpiece. The collar is positioned into said cup in a semi-assembled position and shipped in said position prior to use in production, and each cup-collar combination is used one at a time in a container sealing operation.
One disadvantage of such an arrangement is that during routine shipping and handling the mounting cup often pulls apart and becomes separated from the sealing collar-pump body assembly before it can be used in production. Since either the cup or collar is ineffective without a matching mate, time is undesirably consumed in reassembling the combination for use in the sealing process. This of course introduces an undesirable inefficiency into the manufacturing process.